New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Do you think Unlimited bandwidth is a MUST for a VPN Service?
Hello guys,
For long time I have been developing a VPN service together with a member of this community and have always wanted to ask. Does unlimited bandwidth is a MUST for a VPN Service to be successful? (both in quality and business)
Or a low price package but limited in bandwidth is equally good for the consumers?
At the time, we're planning on a 20GB per month for 15usd/year and 100GB per month for 30usd/year and of course as soon as it gets completed we'll publish it here (if the mods/admins allows us)
So that's it, I want to know your opinions, thanks 
Comments
One could easily buy a Low End Spirit box for $4 ish a year with more bandwidth... Your prices are pretty high..
Can you actually get 1Gbit or 100Mbit unmetered / unlimited plans anyway? That are cheap*
It can always be cheaper. I paid 5€ for a year of Cyberghost VPN with no bandwidth limit and get to connect up to 5 devices.
The VPN market is quite saturated..
I suppose you have to consider what people are using VPN services for:
If you offer multiple locations, that pricing should be fine IF a tad on the expensive side.
20GB per month for 15usd/year. Talk about ripoff.
Locations are (I'm thinking on adding more) Tokyo (JP), Sydeney (Australia), Singapore, Italy, Frankfurt (DE), Sao Paulo (BR), Amsterdam (NL), Paris (FR), London (UK), Montreal (CA), New York (US), Dallas, TX (US), San Francisco (US), Florida (US)
As this is a in-dev project I do need your comments, thats why I opened this thread
20GB wouldn't get me past breakfast, let alone last a month. Unlimited data transfer isn't necessary, but 20GB is too far the other way. I wouldn't consider buying a VPN plan with anything less than 100GB a month, unless they start releasing pr0n in 4k in which case I'm going to need a lot more data transfer
How about pay-per-bandwidth for $3/TB
It's not a must but you need to feel that you have enough, 20GB is very low, as mentioned above VPN market is saturated, so unless you offer something special like double vpn, or some sort app/special software or well innovate in some way, I do not predict a good outcome.
There's not many providers doing similar things at the moment and this is an area where there seems to be some interest from a client perspective.
Getting clients to pay upfront for their bandwidth allocation (say 100GB, 250GB and 500GB blocks), and then this lasts until it's all been used and they then need to purchase another block.
Technically speaking, @Felipe's current proposal provides 12 months worth of 100GB for $30, so $2.50 per month for 100GB when split down. Obviously this isn't taking into account any overselling that @Felipe may or may not be planning, however the numbers suggest that selling 100GB blocks at $2.50 would be a possibility.
Personally I can see an offering such as that gaining more traction, and would encourage @Felipe to consider such a pricing option.
To answer the original question, you'll mainly see two different types of responses from two different types of users. Less technical users want unlimited. More technical users (especially those with knowledge of servers due to being members here or at other similar forums) don't buy into the idea of "unlimited" and may prefer realistic limitations.
Of course the above example doesn't apply to everybody in those two categories, but it's a fairly accurate representation.
If your main clientbase is non-technical users then you may be more inclined to advertise "unlimited", but of course that has it's downsides. You'd need a plan of action for when a bunch of users decide to constantly torrent some Linux ISO's, in your location with the most expensive bandwidth, and are eating through TB after TB, without breaking any conditions of your TOS. If you temporarily take that location offline, they'll move to another server.
Good luck with your VPN service, and make sure that you remember about the (oh so) lovely EU VAT changes as they could provide some real issues for new online businesses in 2015
I care more about the network latency.
I wonder why Koreans and Americans love VPNs though they don't have a firewall like China...
I am a chinese and focus on latency too, so KR JP SG HK TW are all good.But cheap bandwidth only available in JP and SG.
And I use a US west coast VPN to access to League of Legends (NA).
For me unlimited is not neccesary.
I have a US vpn for netflix services and rarely use the 500gb/month I get with that.
I don't think the bandwidth you plan to offer above is enough IMO.
You can get unmetered ports for a couple of bucks a year now...
Unlimited, most people won't even use 20gb for browsing or evading LET bans.
Unlimited to the semi educated user is not required however my opinion for a good business model is that you need to take that concern out of the user space completely.
Either offer so much that no one would ever worry or offer unmetered (don't call it unlimited) and employ some sort of QoS so no 1 user can destroy the service for everyone, limit the pps if anything.
Unless you are catering to a specific crowd and want to deliberately alienate everyone else offering 20GB p/month is just silly considering we are soon to be in 2015 and I had a 50GB p/m limit with my residential ISP's back in the late 90's.
If you are going to start a VPN (bandwidth) service based on a none unmetered backend yourself you are 10 kinds of crazy
Unlimited bandwidth is necessary IMO.
It should be 200GB/month for the $15/month.
yes 200 GB Should be enough I'm heavy user always download few GB files upload to ftp and back download some sources from internet and I only used that much from last 22 days
66.84GB isnt heavy, infact it's very low usage.
66GB over a month isn't 'very low' usage by UK standards. The most recent statistics available from Ofcom report that households (broadband connections) use an average 58GB/mo.
66 GB is only used by one computer.
plus i have 3 more computers , Tablet , 4 Smartphones , Xbox
So around I say 200 GB Monthly is used
Yup, a lot of people here have fairly high usage compared to the "average" user. I can imagine that numbers were much lower a couple of years ago, considering how Netflix, iPlayer etc. usage in the UK must have dramatically increased.
My biggest gripe over here is the mobile phone plans, because most would end up with no data remaining after watching a couple of films over 3G/4G
Check out 3.
Did you misspelled 15/month right?
Seconded. If (like me) you have very little need for actually talking to people on the phone, you can get 100 mins calls, unlimited texts & unlimited data for £15/month on a 1 month rolling contract. If you want a bit of tethering, 4GB will cost you an additional £3 a month.
£3 for 4Gb? Damn... I'm paying 45EUR (Probably around £40) a month for unlimited texting and calling + 4gb of bandwith. (4G)
Cheers, I'll take a look. Generally need more than 100 mins, but I'm getting a new phone soon anyway so might just pop a Three SIM into my current phone for watching films/using Spotify on the go
. Decent pricing on tethering as well.
Is it still truly unlimited with Three? I remember hearing some changes were due to come into place a year or two ago, that would mean that it's no longer truly unlimited and enforcements/throttling would come into play?
I can't say I've looked too deeply into the small print, but I've been a complete prick with it streaming Netflix and Plex on my commute every day and grabbing a few albums a day from Spotify and they've never throttled or complained.
I am not sure why people need so much data over 3g. I have 5 GB then lower speed but rarely went over and then not been throttled, but they are really jerks with roaming. I use it to listen BBC and do rdp mostly+ tethering for the same things. Of course, I have land lines in all locations, all over 200 mbps.
Back on topic, you should avoid offering unlimited anything, you will get torrenters which will hog the speed for everyone else and will get you in trouble with the providers.
I think 200-500 GB a month is reasonable, at 500 GB might already attract torrenters but if the price is not rock-bottom then, maybe not.
Tethering was previously unlimited on some plans but that's now been revised. 3 are in the process of contacting customers on grandfathered plans with unlimited tethering when they're up for renewal and giving them the option to either switch to a new plan or leave.
Unlimited data for mobile handset use remains truly unlimited.